As you can probably tell by now, I try to keep up with developments in technology. I find that doing so helps me perform better, and I’m constantly finding new tools to help me be more productive. One of the best places that I’ve found to keep up with not only developments in technology but also developments in thinking is TED. TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a conference that “brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers” and challenges them to “give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)”. These talks are made available on the web.

I recently randomly ran into a presentation on TED given by the co-creator of BumpTop. While I’m not sure that BumpTop is going to help me be more productive (although there certainly is a possibility that it could), I do know that it’s very cool.

BumpTop is an overhaul of the standard desktop environment that we’ve all come to know and love. It allows you to store files in a more intuitive and “natural” way, piling them up, throwing them around, putting them on shelves, and crumpling them up and tossing them into the trash can. The interface runs on an environment that is physics-enabled, so it behaves much like you would expect it to in the real world. It supports all of the operations that we use everyday when managing our files on our current desktop, but in what appears to be a much more intuitive way.

That’s really all the info that’s available for now. I’m going to keep an eye on BumpTop as it is developed (and am trying to get on the beta), and will post about what I find out here.

In the meantime, here’s a video presentation of the BumpTop prototype:

If you’re reading this in an RSS reader and can’t see the video, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ.

And here’s the video of the presentation that Anand Agarawala gave at TED:

Again, if you’re reading this in an RSS reader and can’t see the video, here’s the link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/131.